Joel Reed Parker: I have also have to chime in. There are many games I have enjoyed just because they are awful. Charlie's Angels and Universal Studios Theme read more

Red_venom: There were definitely b-games back in the 8bit era. Go trapse through the lesser known NES and Master System games and you are bound to read more

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He explains: "Certainly, the phenomenon exists in every other form of entertainment. Everyone loves B movies -- films that are so atrociously acted and scripted that they become perversely enjoyable. There's also plenty of B television. (For two seasons I religiously followed Pam Anderson's show V.I.P., mostly for the odd joy of tallying up the clichés and acting so wooden it was nearly Brechtian.)"

But no such luck for games? Thompson thinks: "B games don't exist because a game isn't something you watch; it's something you do. It's impossible to distance yourself from the badness." Hm... actually, Clive, I propose that there's an equivalent, and it's the relatively playable game that has a gorgeously stereotypical concept/plot.

For me, this is particularly the case for European-developed games using American urban themes - for example, Remedy's Max Payne series and the fabled Colors for Gizmondo (which yes, we've played). Opinions?

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Hell, how many games are there that aren't B games? Can you tell me a game about aliens or zombies taking over the earth isn't a B game? You practically trip over titles like that at Wal-Mart? My question is, where are the A games?

What is Illbleed if not a B game? Maybe that's too easy since it was intentional, but what about something like the recently relesed Hour of Victory? It's so terrible it's comical. Unless you take games dead serious, there's plenty of 'B movie' games out there. Check your local bargain bin.

My fav for this is the only released in Japan Undercover Kei, where enemies would flail madly at thin air and the heroine screams out the name of her cat when she dies. Ugly, awful, but charming somehow.

If you want to play a true 'B' game then play Boiling Point or the original version of Hellboy. (That's so bad, it's the greatest game of all time.) Paralogic, Postal, Perimeter? Even Godhand I would argue is a deliberate 'B' game. There must be hundreds of others.

I've got a pile of crap games I picked up cheap for amusement value. They've got a Post-It note on the top that reads 'IN CASE OF FIRE, THROW GAMES IN'.

Adventures are particularly good for it, due to the story/character element providing yuks even if the game's frustrating or badly put together. As Jim says, Hellboy definitely counts. Hopkins FBI and Lula 3D are a couple of others. Not to mention just about any interactive movie from the 90s.

Of course, most of the humour relies on getting them for 50p at most. That's one major disconnect between movies and games - you've probably invested more to get your hands on the game, and it's tougher to laugh at a £35 waste of money than a crap movie you catch while channel-surfing.

As an aside from actually playing the games, there's also the recent surge of crap game reviews, mostly on YouTube, largely kicked off by the Angry Video Game/Nintendo Nerd, which try to get the fun of a bad game without having to play it. Most are pretty awful, but there are some good ones in there - PlayItBogart and SpoonyOne are probably the best at the moment.

Depending on the game, this kind of thing can pick at the crap bits without having to endure the endless tedium.

(Of course, it does sometimes mean the alternative tedium of some guy just swearing his face off for ten minutes...)

Oh, and of course, let's not forget the movie Game Over - a film made up almost entirely of bad cut-scenes, with some cheap filler (and a child's voiceover for Walter Koenig) shoved in to pretend it was actually a movie.

The thing is that every game is already a B game. That's why when they translate them to movie or book, they end up being B movies or B books.
It's probably been 10 years since the last video game with a story that's good in not only poor video game standards but good in book and movie standards.

I'm actually on something of a crusade to bring this spirit of gleefully retarded gaming back. I set up a website and everything -- http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/ . For my first project, I'm remaking a game that I wrote in QBasic when I was 11 called "The Alien Zit", with appropriately modern production values. Oh, it's going to be tremendous and awful, alright.

Outside of God Hand, the most recent game I can think of that I've played is Raw Danger. It's so cliché, poorly acted, and transparent yet at the same time it's brilliant and completely engaging. It's kind of amazing.

I'm sorry, but there are definitely B games. Sometimes the worst games are amusing to play just because they are so bad.

In that vein, why do you suppose EGM has Seanbaby around? And what of the Angry Video Game [Nintendo] Nerd? These are people who dedicate themselves to playing horrible games as a humor device. It's not the same thing, I realize... it's more of a projection of how horrible a game can be, but I doubt their rants would be quite as funny if we couldn't relate as an audience that has been there and done that.

One last example... one of my friends once bought a Walmart bargain bin game for about $5. I forget the name, but it was some Robin Hood crap game. The thing was, we didn't play it because it was fun, but because it was amusing in how horrible it was. It became almost a centerpiece for conversation with any gamer guests he had.

So yes, there are B games out there... One just has to set aside their personal standards of quality to play them - much like how we must do for movies and TV. Is it more that we, as gamers, are a more discerning lot?

There were definitely b-games back in the 8bit era. Go trapse through the lesser known NES and Master System games and you are bound to find plenty of mind-wrecking games that are so bad they are amazing.

Maybe its just a matter of perspective. Every comment here seems to be looking at the cinematic qualities of a game. I think when something has horrible control and is just a trainwreck of game design that is more of a "b-game." Some are still cool cuz of their story or something fun you can do but you can laugh or cry about how bad some aspect of game mechanic is.

Isn't it sad how some writers have to pretend things don't exist just to get a headline? What's next? "Where Are All the Women Gamers"? Or how about, "Why aren't there more games with 'Mario' in the title"?